Canberra, 3 August 1961
Confidential
Submission No. 12931 —Wheat Sales to Mainland China
1. The Cabinet was of the opinion that the draft long-term agreement between the China Corporation and the Australian Wheat Board was most unsatisfactory. It displayed a vagueness which might well give rise to a dispute between the two parties in the future. Any documentation should avoid creating the inference that the China Corporation would receive preference over the established buyers of Australian wheat, including those who buy only sporadically. If the main purpose of the agreement is to indicate to the Chinese that they would be accepted by the Board as buyers of Australian wheat up to the end of 1963, the Cabinet doubted whether a written agreement was necessary.
2. The Cabinet agreed that the Minister for Primary Industry2 should obtain from the Chairman of the Wheat Board on an informal basis the reasons why the Board wishes to enter into a long-term agreement and any proposed documentation, and should then confer with the Minister for Trade3 and the Attomey-General4 before conveying views, again in an informal manner, to the Chairman of the Wheat Board.5
[NAA: A4940, C3287]
1 1 August 1961. It noted that the Wheat Board had decided to enter into a two-year agreement with the China Resources Company, subject to approval from the Commonwealth Government. The submission argued that in-principle approval was reasonable but that the form of the agreement held dangers, such as committing the Board to the Chinese over traditional markets and projecting the impression that credit terms would be available to Peking.
2 Charles Adermann.
3 John McEwen.
4 Sir Garfield Barwick.
5 Sir John Teasdale.